When you realize that one of your favorite video game franchises turns 25, it hits you like a lightning bolt that you're not a young kid anymore. Long gone are the days when you were a mini version of yourself pointing a wired PlayStation controller at the TV and thinking if you were turning it sideways, the car would steer better. If that didn't make you feel nostalgic, then maybe the newest trailer from PlayStation celebrating 25 years of Gran Turismo will.
The Gran Turismo series has always been developed by Polyphony Digital under Sony. It has never been on any other gaming platform other than the PlayStation. In other words, the highly reputable racing game series evolved through the years alongside the consoles themselves.
With every iteration, the gameplay mechanics, graphics, sound design, along with every other technological facet of Gran Turismo, got better and better at making anyone with a controller feel like they were behind the wheel, on the track, straight from their living room.
This being said, the series was born out of a random gathering of elements, or maybe better put, it was born out of a perfect storm. The creator Kazunori Yamauchi never intended to make video games. Since he was just a child, he has always dreamt of producing movies.
After he grew up, he joined Sony in the hopes that he would make a career out of it. But as chance saw fit, he somehow ended up in the PlayStation department. After seeing what this console could do with 3D graphics, he was love-stricken with it.
Thus came into existence the first Gran Turismo game back in 1997, but few people know that development actually started way back in 1992. That was two years before the first PlayStation was even released. This was an extremely rare phenomenon for that era because other titles were being developed in less than a year.
However, this might have something to do with the fact that the development team was comprised of two part-time artists and three engineers. Now, Polyphony Digital boasts over 200 employees, each of them working strictly on Gran Turismo.
After a quarter of a century leading the series, and with more than 90 million copies sold, Kazunori Yamauchi wrote a letter to the fans, saying that "We have newfound determination to continue our progress into the future with a strong sense of purpose. We appreciate all of your support over the last 25 years. Thank you."
From the looks of it, it seems like a future Gran Turismo title is undoubtedly on the horizon. And if GT7 looked and felt so good while being a cross-generation game, ,I for one, simply cannot wait to see what a fully current-gen Gran Turismo 8 would be like, ray tracing and all.
Codrin just loves American classics, from the 1940s and ‘50s, all the way to the muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. In his perfect world, we'll still see Hudsons and Road Runners roaming the streets for years to come (even in EV form, if that's what it takes to keep the aesthetic alive). Full profile
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